How could individuals compensate others for non-necessary services in a planned socialist economy? If wished to commission a piece of art, would I have to shell out an exorbitant amount of vouchers to an artist's collective? Or would I be able to look them up individual artists in a directory provided by the Decentralized Planning System?
Furthermore, what about incredibly simple tasks that I'd prefer not to do and couldn't be automated with current technology? Say for example, pulling weeds in the flowerbed after I broke my leg.
In my ideal society, people would be willing to do these things out of the desire to enrich the lives of others and improve the community at large. However, even in a socialist utopia, I doubt most folks would be so altruistic.
This is a difficult question, but I honestly think we'll have to come to grips with it someday. If it isn't some sort of currency exchange, it'll be people trading goods for the services they'd like, which isn't much better.
Just guarantee a job that pays a living wage, and doesn't take up much time in the day. People will create art on their own.
Julian Thompson
He means art made to one's specifications. If under socialism I want to get a specific image of my furry OC wearing diapers, how would I go about incentivizing an artist to draw it for me?
Hunter Parker
By becoming one yourself.
Sebastian Robinson
by asking an artist, just like we do now online in drawthreads
Carson King
There will always be many skilled volunteers, with the assumption being you'd have to contact them first. If not, you could always do it yourself, which would be more accurate to what you wanted as well. However, how will you treat such examples as getting someone to pull your weed after your broke your ankle? Will volunteerism just be something instilled into every person in socialism, so it wouldn't be a problem of finding the person to do it then?
Hunter Wilson
You pay them labour vouchers for as much time as it takes them to make the art you want or do the chore you want. It's self evident: the other provides you directly with useful labour, so you pay them with an equivalent draw on the general labour pool.
And if they want to gift you, that's fine too.
Elijah Moore
found your problem
Jayden Turner
how about people just do what they want to do. if you want a piece of art you get some paint and do it yourself or join with others who are also into art.
Zachary Edwards
(USER BECAME VICTIM OF COMMUNISM #100000001 FOR THIS POST)
Carter Ortiz
Can't make this shit up folks
Robert Perez
Personally I don't get how travel would work. Like say I go to Paris and want to get a coffee and drink it near the Eiffel tower. In my own community I would fairly take from whatever cafe was open as an active contributor. But I haven't contributed directly in any immediate sense in Paris. Would I be expected to work for a time? I know no one can be sure of the specifics of socialism at this point but dilemmas like these gnaw at me on occassion.
Jayden Fisher
Labor vouchers are destroyed the instance they are used in exchange for goods, because otherwise they are currency. Furthermore, wouldn't that incentivize them to take their time working?
It's assumed that if two places are at that point of development where they are using labor vouchers, then they are likely of the same state.
Ryan Powell
It's a trivial difference. The person who wants the art uses their vouchers, and the people making the art are credited vouchers for their labour as they make the art.
Jayden Wilson
I always assumed it would be free. I mean assuming you put in your 6.5 hours of work a day or whatever. Why would money be needed?
Brayden Rogers
How do proponents of economic planning deal with the fact that fixed resource allocation encourages black-market activity? How would producers take into account the preferences of consumers without any market mechanisms? How would a planned economy incentivize innovation considering that it cannot be planned in advance?
Jeremiah Mitchell
Isnt the goal of the central planning to fulfill that demand though? Also you cant have a black market without money
The way information is shared nowadays, the internet. I can order anything from my phone and have it arrive in days and provide feedback about it within minutes. I'm sure there would be some sort of recourse for improving and increasing the efficiency etc. Also the producers would also be consumers of the product(ideally) or if not a consumers union would be able to levy input into the product. If you weren't consulting the consumers of the product about said product then that seems like a massive oversight to me.
How would a planned economy incentivize innovation considering that it cannot be planned in advance? Personally a Stakhanovite-esque culture of civic nationalism where everyone realizes we all contribute to society and are responsible for each other and all that bullshit. I dont know about you, but I'm always trying to figure out how to do my job better, using less energy, waste less. That tendency is significantly altered in capitalism because we don't have any relation to to the production itself beyond getting our paychecks. That said I'm not sure how to answer this, I think if there would be any effect it would only increase innovation as you would have less people flipping burgers and spending more time doing things that may or may not be more valuable.
Ask them. Have them tell us. With an app or something. That's what the militsiya is for.
Julian Torres
I'd been toying about in my head, once in a while, with the idea of a dual voucher economy. One set of vouchers for necessities, perhaps called Staples, that purchases things such as food, basic clothing, a modest home, etc. The second set for luxury products, things that would be considered excess if everyone had them, I'm thinking stuff like vidya, snack foods, more lavish (with in reason) accommodations, etc. I'd even say personal motor vehicles should be considered luxury personal devices.
So you put in 10 hours of work for staples and get your share determined by labour hours and modifiers like danger and stress (if applicable). From then on, you can use the many remaining hours of the week to pursue creative goals that enrich society in more nuanced and elevated ways, which earns Lux.
Jose Nguyen
Why not just decommodify those things that are needs?
Tyler Lopez
Two tiers of vouchers for basics/luxury are also part of what Takis Fotopoulos proposes under the name "Inclusive Democracy".
Benjamin Brown
And what incentives would producers have to take their opinion into account if they don’t face competitive pressure to do so?
Even a police state like the USSR has catastrophically failed at suppressing black-market activity which arose due to fixed resource allocation.
Why do proponents of economic planning invariably end up making such totalitarian and ridiculous proposals?
Nathaniel Lopez
The producers don't have a choice in the mater, it's the consumer input that shapes the central plan they follow.
Ryder Nelson
dude fuck you, worst b8
Jackson Edwards
It's actually due to misguided populist practices of subsidizing goods and the people having too much circulating currency. Keynes called it "demand-pull inflation", when too much money is chasing too few goods. But when prices are fixed, and not allowed to inflate, all the goods disappear and black markets arise.
I would go with comunitary workshops on every neighbouhood, make them whe shopping centers were before. People would gather at those places to work at ,teach and learn personal interests such as woodworking, painting, custom cars, hobby science or whattever people in the region decide to do. All the excess products from the workshop can then be traded or given to people in the ecommunity.
Jeremiah Price
Why not let the state heavily subsidize the necessities such as the housing, medical care, food and public transportation and let the "luxury" items have their price be their actual labour value?
I belive in at least the very specific case of art commision either will come in lovely, and if not, then say trying to "repay" them to the best of your ability, bake them a pie, have your grandma bake em a pie, or bake a pie together, or just come around whenever they're in need of a helping hand. Cheers'
Also this nowadays it's harder to get an unpaid comissioon because drawing, as even simple weed pulling, takes up time, and time equals money, which is hard to get by nowadays, so people have little spare time.
Under communism we'll have much more of that than humanity's ever had, as the Marxist ideal goes:
Thomas Mitchell
If you want art in a socialist economy you have to be nice to artists and ask them politely while not insulting them, you can't just be a dick and force them to make stuff like you're used to. I know that's a hard one for you to get used to but too bad.
That's a pretty rough way to phrase that. Like 99% of the agriculture industry is arguably not necessary. Like 99.9999% of the "beverage industry" is arguably unecessary for certain, you could just drink water. It's okay though. So anyways a big part of this is that you are referring to individuals, so obviously we are referring to a small scale of "production". To me, it is obvious that this will be done through simple trade. A person (A) will find a person (B) and give an item(s) (A1) for the item(s) (B1). This isn't Capitalism for a number of reasons and ties the problem up quite nicely. For one, their isn't any private ownership of labor going on here. The worker in question is completely free to do this work as he wishes, and in that he is allowed to give the product of his labor for whatever he wants. This sounds like liberal nonsense, but that is why I mentioned the scale of the production. There is no global/societal capitalism here. No wage-slave labour (whatever it's called). This is significant because it means the worker can actually sell their work at a value it is worth to them and the buyer can buy it at a price worth it to them. This can't develop into Capitalism anymore than trading chairs or cards could start Capitalism. It's just not commodity production on a large scale. These are two people trading based on use value, not exchange value. It's significantly different. I have a little more I could write out, but this is already a large post and I'm not even at the end yet. Just, before anyone gets buttmad, consider that you wouldn't be able to stop this, and that if you don't respond too stupidly, I will explain myself and we could come to an agreement. I was going to talk about how it ties up some "calculation"/planning issues nicely. You would buy them like you now? You are speaking of things like growing food, manufacturing pens, and sewing clothes? You would just pay a lawn care service or someone willing. Or, like a normal person, you would find someone who doesn't absolutely despise you and ask them to help you. Your leg is broken, not everyone can you hate you so much no one would deweed your lawn for you. Sounds horrible. In my ideal society, shit isn't going wrong so often that people have to continually "dig deep" into themselves to fix things by being "altruistic".
Daniel Rivera
If it's non-essential labor, then is this really that big of an issue?
Friends say stuff like "hey I'm painting my kitchen, come on over and help me and we'll have some beers and dinner" all the time already.
Vouchers are allotted in exchange for socially necessary labor. Moreover, they shouldn't be transferable between individuals. Then it's no different than currency.
Henry Johnson
It's still different from currency in the fact that it's destroyed upon use, no?
Dylan Miller
There are still differences sure. But if somebody is being compensated for non-productive labor and then exchanging that token for the productive labor of others, you run into a problem.
Cooper Price
No necessary services wouldn't be services anymore unless volentarily taken up by mutual parties.
So, like, washing dishes. The "service" of washing Dishes at like a job would cease to be ok anything other than a basis of need. Like doing your own dishes or you and a friend comming together to do Dishes together.
The service sector is comprised of busy body tasks and can pretty much be eradicated.
I like cockshotts system and I always play with the idea of the following:
The only downside is that in the case of artists this could still be abused. An artist could ask non-monetary favours in exchange for doing a painting, although I guess that shouldn't be that much of an issue, as it is people's free choice to blow some artist's gob to get a painting.
Nolan Mitchell
Forgot to add: You have to be carefull with this stuff though. The goal is to eventually eliminate work, not to create more of it through weird loopholes and a new kind of "donation" economy that could come from such a system. We need to instil the mindset and mentality into society of working because you want to work, not to sell everything not bolted down. Art should be free, the wage for an artist from this donation system should not exceed normal living wages and expenses. Luckily with such a system it is relatively easy to enforce a limit of the wage you can earn (there is only 24 hours a day after all), so good artists wouldn't be able to live like kings because of their reputation, at most they could buy better equipment to draw and make art.
Eli Roberts
it's no wonder you fucking retards can't understand communism when you don't even know what constitutes capitalism
Leo Gray
They refuse to accept it's anything other than their cherry picked defenitions.
